VISTAS Animal Assisted Therapy

VISTAS Online is an innovative publication produced for ACA by Dr. Garry R. Walz and Dr. Jeanne C. Bleuer of Counseling Outfitters, LLC. Its purpose is to provide a means of capturing the ideas, information and experiences generated by the annual ACA Conference and selected ACA Division Conferences. Papers on a program or practice that has been validated through research or experience may also be submitted. This digital collection of peer-reviewed articles is authored by counselors, for counselors. VISTAS Online contains the full text of over 900 proprietary counseling articles published from 2004 to 2017.

A key task in supervision is to establish a strong working alliance (Bordin, 1983). As the supervisory relationship contains many parallels to the counseling relationship (Bernard & Goodyear, 2009), counseling interventions that enhance working alliances may extend to supervision. One such intervention is animal assisted therapy in counseling (AAT-C). Including AAT-C in supervision may help the supervisor build a strong working alliance with the supervisee and enhance the process of supervision in ways that would not be possible without the inclusion of a therapy animal. The authors present several case studies that illustrate ways that AAT-C interventions impacted supervision.